-  The Milwaukee Police Department: High Fives and Pedestrian Safety
        - Improving Police-Community Relations in Six U.S. Cities
        - On the Beat over the Holidays: In Conversation with Wayne Vincent
        - The Peacemaker Corps: Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Conflict Resolution
        -  Private Prisons: Change in Policy and Practice
        -  Social Media: How Police Agencies Are Re-writing the Communications Handbook

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### Private Prisons: Change in Policy and Practice

Today, the United States accounts for 5 percent of the world’s  population, and yet it holds 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. According to the American Civil Liberties  Union (ACLU), 1  it  has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, surpassing that of  repressive governments like China, Russia, and Iran. This level of  incarceration is a result, not only of policy-making, but also of private  prison lobbying—millions of dollars spent to advocate policies that increase  sentences and incarcerate more people. 

        Private prisons in the United States were virtually  nonexistent before the 1980s, when the War on Drugs introduced “three strikes”  and similar policies that led to a dramatic hike in the prison population. With  the increase in prisoners came the need to build more prison facilities. The  government, unable to sustain the increasing number of inmates, sought  privatized prisons to solve the dilemma. Today, for-profit companies are  responsible for approximately 6 percent of state prisoners, 16 percent of  federal prisoners, and nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal  government.

On August 18, 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)  announced that the federal government will phase out the use of federal private prisons. According to   Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, “They simply do not  provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they  do not save substantially on costs; and, as noted in a recent report by the  Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level  of safety and security.” 2 

             Despite this statement, proponents of privatized prisons  maintain that they are      cost-effective for the state. An early research study by  the Reason Public Policy      Institute stated "Private prisons save money—10  to 15 percent average savings on operations costs, based on fourteen  independent cost comparison studies.”3  However, a study by the U.S Bureau of Justice Statistics found “no such  cost-savings when it compared public and private prisons,” and others have  found inconclusive results.4  But objections to private prison use go far  beyond cost; whether the use of private prisons saves the government money or  not, a business model driven by incentive to profit on the incarceration of citizens  is in itself a danger to the freedom of society. 

        In a 2010 Annual Report filed by Corrections Corporation of  America (CCA), the company expressed concerns about the adverse effects of leniency  in conviction and parole standards and sentencing practices on the private  prison business. The interests of private prison corporations are in direct  conflict to prison reforms such as sentencing reform and alternatives to  incarceration.5  As a FindLaw article summarized, 

        “One of the most perverse incentives in a privately run  prison system is that the more prisoners a company houses, the more it gets  paid. This leads to a conflict of interest on the part of privately run prisons  where they, in theory, are incentivized to not rehabilitate prisoners. If  private prisons worked to reduce the number of repeat offenders, they would be  in effect reducing the supply of profit-producing inmates.”6   

        Lisa Wade, a cultural critic and associate professor at  Occidental College in Los Angeles, agrees: "Companies that house prisoners  for profit have a perverse incentive to increase the prison population . . .  there is no motivation to rehabilitate prisoners."7 

        As early as 2000, state representatives such as Oklahoma’s  Kenneth Corn (D-Howe) were speaking out against prison privatization on  budgetary grounds. "We are neglecting our state prison facilities by  taking budget funds from them so we can pour money into private prisons."  He added that in Oklahoma, “The average cost is $37 per day for each inmate in  a state-operated facility, compared with $44 per day for those in private  prisons.”8   

        In addition to charging more per inmate than a state run  facility, private run prisons often compromise the health of inmates in order  to save money. For example in Arizona, a class action lawsuit filed by the ACLU  against the Arizona Department of Corrections in 2013 stated that the facility had  illegally mistreated Arizona inmates. They argued that, through the “grossly inadequate  medical, mental health, and dental care they were given, it placed them  [inmates] in grave danger of suffering serious and preventable injury,  amputation, disfigurement, and premature death.”9   Because private prisons are motivated by  profit rather than rehabilitative concern, they look for any means to increase  and sustain their profits, whether it is through cutting the costs of health  care services of the inmates, lobbying for policies that create harsher and  longer sentencing, or by negotiating minimum occupancy requirements into their  contracts with the states to ensure their prison beds are always full. 

      At a time when multiple organizations and agencies are  working together to improve a criminal justice system that has proven to be  flawed and desperately need of repair, the private prison industry is actively hindering  that progress. The use of private prisons allows ethically void corporations to  profit off the most vulnerable members of society: children; the economically disadvantaged;  and immigrant detainees, who make up the largest private prison demographic. The Bureau of Prisons has been working to decrease reliance on private prisons and  the Department of Justice will continue to support criminal justice reform at  the state and local level.

Vicky Rivera         Special Contributor, COPS Office

### References

1 All statistics in first two paragraphs from ACLU,  Banking on Bondage (New York, 2011),  https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/bankingonbondage_20111102.pdf. 

2 Office of the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, *Phasing Out Our Use of Private Prisons*, [press  release]  August 18, 2016, https://www.justice.gov/opa/blog/phasing-out-our-use-private-prisons.

3 Adrian Moore, Private Prisons: Quality Corrections  at a Lower Cost, Policy Study 240 (Los  Angeles: Reason Public Policy Institute, 1998), http://reason.org/files/d14ffa18290a9aeb969d1a6c1a9ff935.pdf

4 Cody Mason, *Too Good to be True: Private  Prisons in America* (Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2012), .

5  U.S. Department of Justice, *Smart On  Crime: Reforming The Criminal Justice System for the 21st Century* (Washington, DC, 2013), https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/ag/legacy/2013/08/12/smart-on-crime.pdf.

6  “Private Jails in the United States,” FindLaw.com, accessed September 22, 2016, http://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-rights/private-jails-in-the-united-states.html.

7  Lisa Wade, “The Number of People in Private Prisons Has Grown By 1,664 percent  in the Last 19 Years,” blog post, Mic.com, January 25, 2013, https://mic.com/articles/24142/the-number-of-people-in-private-prisons-has-grown-by-1-664-in-the-last-19-years#.9Ijw3VCwm. 

8  “Lawmaker Questions State Funding for Private Prisons,” The Journal Record (Oklahoma City), October 2,  2000. 

9  Caroline Isaacs, “Death Yards: Continuing Problems with Arizona’s Correctional  Health Care” (Tuscon: American Friends Service Committee–Arizona, 2013), http://www.afsc.org/document/death-yards-continuing-problems-arizonas-correctional-health-care.

 

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 The Milwaukee Police Department: High Fives and Pedestrian Safety| The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice: Improving Police-Community Relations in Six U.S. Cities  |  On the Beat over the Holidays: In Conversation with Wayne Vincent  |The Peacemaker Corps: Promoting Peace, Tolerance, and Conflict Resolution  | Private Prisons: Change in Policy and Practice  | Social Media: How Police Agencies Are Re-writing the Communications Handbook 

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